Jay Goldmintz suggests that the tefillah component of the school day should receive as much attention and preparation as any other class.

I myself often feel that tefillah is the most exhausting part of my day… I desperately seek the goal…of creating a space where students can have a personal and meaningful connection with God and would take ownership over maintaining decorum of that time and space.

I like the idea of giving students quiet personal reflection time, but wonder whether they are ready to value the “sound of silence.” I am very concerned that I have gradually become a warden, always looking for someone who might be talking, and have drifted far away from being a model of the “joy and warmth of davening,” which may actually be a more effective tool in creating that space that I want.

These sentiments reflect countless others I have heard over the years from faculty across the country and the denominational spectrum whose job it is to supervise tefillah on a daily basis. So many faculty who are worn down if not worn out by the time their first teaching class begins every morning – so many people who are proud consummate professionals when it comes to teaching in the classroom who nevertheless too often feel that they have been reduced to being “wardens” and “policewomen,” ironically in one of the few places in the school day where kids actually “do” Judaism, the thing which makes these educators so passionate to begin with.

Having supervised high school minyanim for years, my own transformation from this mindset began with a simple step – I stopped looking at minyan (just) as a pray-er and instead started thinking about it as an educator. I stopped looking at it (just) as a place of prayer and instead started looking at it as a classroom.

When I first started supervising a minyan, one of a half-dozen faculty in a room of 200 or more students, I walked in, as I would to any synagogue, thinking that we were all there for the same purpose – to pray. Surely that was the primary reason that I was there, to fulfill my daily obligation, and if I could help create an atmosphere that would enhance students’ prayer and sense of community as well, then that would be great. Needless to say, I was quickly disappointed as I became one of those teachers I always swore I would never be, getting upset that I wasn’t able to pray for myself, getting upset with students who were talking or completely passive and, most important, getting upset with myself for getting upset with students.

Now compare that mindset instead with the one I have when I walk into a classroom to teach a particular subject. One of the first things I would do is want to know something about the students. What age are they? What stages are they at in their cognitive, social and emotional development? What have their experiences of this subject been in the past? Surely these considerations will help me determine my educational goals for the year! And yet, when we walk into tefillah, especially one that has students from different grades in it, we too often assume that one size fits all. We fail to take into account almost everything we know about child development. In addition, there is a whole body of research available to us now on the development of religion in general and prayer in particular in children and adolescents. What do elementary, middle and high school students think about prayer? About God? What do children or adolescents feel or believe about prayer? About God? Are there differences between boys and girls? Are there transitional stages that we should be cognizant of? Yet relatively few teachers are familiar with this literature. How much more realistic might we be about our expectations of our students; how much more effective might we be as professionals if we could utilize that research toward crafting appropriate tefillah goals for ourselves? And, in the end, how much richer might our students’ religious lives be?

The underlying assumption of this analogy, of course, is that we have goals that are separate from (though not exclusive of) fulfilling one’s obligation. One of those goals, I believe, is that students need to be taught what prayer is or, more particularly, they need to learn how to pray. By this I mean that in addition to the mechanics and the rules, we need to enable and empower students to find their own meaning in the words of the Siddur, to tap into the reservoir of their own experience and to help them develop their own personal relationship with God. We too often presume that they know how to do this and then we are disappointed when they do not. But in point of fact, for all of the truth that I believe there is about children’s innate spirituality, the formal way of Jewish prayer can be a pretty sophisticated and adult-like affair. Indeed, ask most adults about when they really came to appreciate tefillah and they will say it was when they went to Israel for the year or at some point in their emerging adult or adult lives. If so, then what expectations can we have of our students unless we help them tap into their own spirituality and help them to find their own voice in the siddur?

(Note: I have laid out some initial thoughts about this in an article entitled, Helping students find their own voice in tefillah: A conceptual framework for teachers. Available at www.lookstein.org/ articles/voice_tefillah.pdf. That article, in turn, formed some of the basis of my thinking in my work on the Ani Tefillah weekday and Shabbat siddurim published by Koren.)

How to teach our students to find their voices thus becomes an educational challenge. It can take place during tefillah itself and/or in the classroom but what we need to develop, then, is a pedagogy of tefillah education. Under the auspices of the Legacy 613 Foundation and NCSY, we have embarked on a pilot project with a half dozen high schools to explore the possibilities of what exactly it means to educate students toward tefillah, especially during tefillah itself. We seek to put together a collection of resources and best practices, just as there would (or should) be in any subject area that we teach. At the same time, there are countless professionals who are experimenting on their own, seeking ways to help students make tefillah more meaningful. How much better armed we would all be if we were to walk into tefillah every day armed with those tools. We need only begin to think like educators and not just pray-ers.

To illustrate further what it means to enter into minyan as an educator: I would never teach a high school or middle school class of 200 students. I might do it in college, but then you wouldn’t expect anything more of me than to be a lecturer and you could then expect a lot of students to be on their phones or computers. Why on earth would it then make sense, except for logistical reasons, to have a minyan with that number of students? Surely when it comes to tefillah, like almost any educational setting, smaller is always better, especially given that there is an experiential component that I want to help cultivate as well. Even if I only formally “teach” once or twice a week, the likelihood of having any individual impact is diminished by the large number of students in the room. In a regular synagogue, bigger may be better but in education there are limits to class sizes. Logic and educational thinking dictates that there should be limits to the size of a school minyan as well.

Another example: before I begin a new class, I look at my class roster to see if there are students in need of individualized instruction or accommodation. If a student in one of my classes told me that she was inattentive because she could not read Hebrew easily or because she was bored, would I allow her to opt out altogether? Would I not try to help her? Why should tefillah be any different? If I knew a student was having personal problems at home, would I demand that he conform to all of the same demands as the rest of the class? If I knew that a parent was recently deceased or unemployed or ill, would I not approach a student to find out how their classwork was being impacted? Should I not do the same for a student having difficulty connecting with God? Would a student with ADD be reprimanded for getting up and leaving the classroom or would I make accommodations? And yet I have heard of numerous such students who are either disciplined for their restlessness or worse, happy to be left to leave the room for long periods of time so that they don’t disturb. Surely such students need help sitting for what for some can be an interminable amount of time. If a child was too embarrassed to read out loud in class, what would you do for him? Just allow him to sit? Meet with him privately? Put a group of kids together for remediation and support? Surely, you would do something other than force him into an uncomfortable position or ignore him because he isn’t causing trouble. By the same token, if I had a child who was a particularly good reader, would I make him the same go-to person every day just so that the class went more smoothly? Yet how many kids never learn to be hazzanim because it’s just too easy for us to have the same students lead all of the time? That might work for a synagogue experience but not an educational one.

In a similar vein, what if I had a star student who was mature beyond her years. She came to class having read all the books already or had achieved a level of proficiency that was beyond the other students. Would I tell her to take the year off? Would I tell her to just sit in her seat and keep doing what she is doing and maintain her status quo? Or would I find some form of enrichment? Would I find ways to help continue to nurture and grow her love and experience of the subject? And if I am blessed to have one or an entire minyan of such students, do I not owe it to them to help nurture and grow their spirituality and relationship to God through the siddur besides just offering them a place to pray in the morning?

There have been any number of times, I am sorry to say, that I have taught a boring Tanakh (or anything else) class. I was so excited by the material since I love it so, that I thought I had put together a series of award-winning lesson plans. But I missed the boat and misread the crowd. So if you were my supervisor, would you tell me to just keep teaching because the material is good and, if the kids are bored, it’s their problem? Just keep trucking and they will eventually see the beauty of the material as you do! Alternatively, you could tell me that the kids aren’t into Tanakh and so I should teach meditation instead. Or would you tell me to ditch my lesson plans and start all over again and find another way to motivate my students? I am not one to give up on the traditional service or matbe’a tefillah (tefillah formula), but if minyan is the same “boring” thing to my students every day, then as a policeman I might tell them to tough it out, but as an educator I put the onus on myself to come up with ways to change it up so that the experience is a little more appealing and meaningful. The pray-er in me may want to just get through davening so I can move on to first period class, but the educator in me demands an educational response now.

When I begin a new class, I give students a list of expectations that govern behavior as well as participation. Would I ever permit a student in my class to sit with his or her book closed for the entire semester? Would I permit a student to be a chronic latecomer to my class without addressing it? Would I permit a student to be a constant talker without taking some more definitive action? I am not suggesting that these are all discipline issues in the narrow sense. Rather, I am suggesting that they are educational issues and just as we would not resort to or ignore discipline every day in our classrooms, neither should we in minyan. Indeed, an argument could be made that they are all the more critical to be addressed in tefillah. I recall when I first took to calling parents about their child’s conduct in tefillah. It took the first few minutes of the conversation to convince the parent that I wasn’t calling in order to complain nor to insist on disciplinary measures but rather because I was concerned and because I wanted to collaborate with the parent about the child’s attitude toward tefillah and what we could do about it together. In short, I called them just as I would call a parent of one of the students in my Tanakh class who was exhibiting similar behaviors. I was calling as an educator and not as a warden.

Changing one’s mindset to think of the minyan as a classroom can help significantly. With the introduction of this notion I have watched as faculty meetings about tefillah turned from complaints and negativity to collaborative creative problem solving. A principal told me that it completely changed everything he did that was tefillah related in school, from the way he talked to kids in davening to the way he did discipline to the way he did professional development within the school. Indeed, I would ban the very terms “minyan supervision” or “tefillah supervisor.” I would never describe my role as a Tanakh teacher as a “Tanakh supervisor” or even as a “class supervisor.” To call me any of those things is to diminish my role as a tefillah educator.

Once I begin to think educationally, then other pieces begin to fall into place as some of us have begun to articulate the answers to such questions as: What are realistic goals for different age groups? When is it better to teach during tefillah as opposed to in a classroom setting? How often should one teach during tefillah? What does it mean to teach tefillah? How does one teach about a relationship with God? How can we include students in doing the teaching? What does it mean to inspire? What does meaningmaking mean in the context of a formulaic text and ritual? Which texts lend themselves better to meaning-making and for what ages? How do we assess success? To name but a few.

To be a tefillah educator, however, especially in the context of morning tefillah itself, is a gargantuan and daunting affair. I need to take attendance, make sure everything gets started on time, ensure that there are gabbaim who are in charge and doing their jobs, be on the lookout for the hazan to keep the right pace and not make any errors, be on the lookout for talkers and disrupters and deal with them in a meaningful way, keep track of latecomers, make sure there are enough siddurim available, look out for kids who are having a bad day or seem preoccupied, discover and talk to the kids who have theological issues, make sure the students are wearing their tefillin correctly, watch out for the student who has their siddur upside down the whole time…and the list goes on including, most especially, modeling what it means to be a serious pray-er myself. And through it all, I need to find opportunities to teach or inspire students about what it means to pray and ideally to empower them to do the same for one another.

In many ways this sounds no different than any other classroom responsibility of many a Jewish educator and that is exactly what it should be. If indeed this is a task for a professional educator, as I am advocating it should be, then for those who indeed take it on as educators, as opposed to as policemen, there should be appropriate remuneration as well. Being a tefillah educator requires a level of commitment and preparation and seriousness of purpose that is in many ways no different than those of a classroom teacher.

As my colleagues Susan Wall and Zvi Hirschfield (2015) have written elsewhere, the time has come to recognize tefillah as a field of Jewish education in its own right. In a recent doctoral course I was teaching, I was delighted by the number of teachers and principals in the class who said that spirituality is an important and regular part of the professional conversation among faculty.

Through the workshops I run for faculty I have been amazed by the dedication and creativity of a whole generation of teachers and principals who are already thinking like tefillah educators but who are desperate for more ideas and guidance and resources. The work of such organizations as Legacy 613 and NCSY and Pardes are an important step in that direction. The future will depend on the extent to which the rest of us can change our mindset and climb on board. In the words of veteran teacher Rita Pierson, “Is this job tough? You betcha. Oh God, you betcha. But it is not impossible. We can do this. We are educators. We’re born to make a difference.” (Pierson, 2013)

References Hirschfield, Z. and Wall, S. (2015). Putting tefillah back on schools’ agenda. Havruta. Jerusalem: Pardes Institute. Also retrievable from http:// ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-to-put-tefilah-back-on-schools-agenda/

Pierson, R. (2013). Every kid needs a champion. Retrieved from www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion

Jay Goldmintz teaches at Ma`ayanot Yeshiva High School (Teaneck, NJ). Rabbi Dr. Goldmintz is also Educational Director of the Legacy 613 Foundation, an adjunct at Azrieli Graduate School, and runs tefillah workshops for teachers. He is author of the Koren Ani Tefilla Siddur series, winner of the 2014 National Jewish Book Award.